


Part 8: Blindness

by kw20742



Series: Something Like Love [9]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 09:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15838143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kw20742/pseuds/kw20742
Summary: Scene continuation from a deleted scene meant for the beginning of 2.7 (which I assume as canon, and which is available on the DVD set), just after Jocelyn’s mum’s funeral when she and Maggie are on J’s balcony.





	Part 8: Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> Scene continuation from a deleted scene meant for the beginning of 2.7 (which I assume as canon, and which is available on the DVD set), just after Jocelyn’s mum’s funeral when she and Maggie are on J’s balcony.

 

 

All the way back from Jocelyn’s house, Maggie’s been debating whether to make this particular call. She knows she shouldn’t, that it would break all the rules, that it would officially make her a thoroughly insensitive, selfish wanker. There would be no ambiguity there, let’s just be clear about that. But she needs someone to talk to who understands not only the pitfalls of lesbian love (and there are oh, so many), but also the complexities of her history with Jocelyn.

As it happens there is only one person in all the world that meets both criteria. And Maggie absolutely, positively, without a doubt should notnotnot call her. Fuck.

The person she really _should_ talk to (and she will, she _must_ , if they’re to go any further) is in no fit state to hear her right now. Indeed, Maggie’s quite doubtful at this moment if she ever will be. And that scares the shit out of her. Because life without Jocelyn Knight has, just in the last few days, in the middle of all this chaos, become, once again, unthinkable. 

But Maggie might have to let her go. Again. Or once and for all. (She’s honestly not sure which it would be.) Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, Jocelyn seems to have spun a narrative that puts her at the centre of a universe of one. In which she is without friends, social networks, or community, and certainly without Maggie. A singular, solitary being cocooned up in her home on Briar Cliff without need or want of another living soul. As if that’s all there is to her story. As if Maggie hasn’t been here the whole damn time.

And if it turns out that’s how Jocelyn’s story ends, it’s because Jocelyn, herself, will have made it happen through her choices, and hers alone.

Maggie can feel her heart racing, the hot tears stinging her eyelids. It just hurts too much to love someone who _literally_ _won’t let you_ love them.

So, deciding that she can’t possibly fuck it up with Lil anymore than she already has done, Maggie parks the car in the driveway and hits the name still in her list of favourite contacts.

Worst case, she reasons, Lil will yell at her for being a complete jackass and then ring off. And she’d deserve it, make no mistake about it. Because you don’t call a former partner to ask her advice about the woman you’re in love with—and _were_ , the whole time you were with her. It’s just not the done thing, old chap.

 

***

In the small basement rec room of her semi-detached house in Lower King’s Ave, Exeter, Lil Ryan is ten minutes into her daily workout when No Doubt’s “Just a Girl,” the fourth tune in her mood-boosting feminist playlist, is rudely interrupted by an incoming call—from almost literally the last person in the world she ever expected to hear from again.

Lil answers curtly, clearly (and understandably) surprised that Maggie would be calling her: “Well, hi.” It’s partly a question.

“Hi,” Maggie responds, “Bad time?” Lil is panting. Heavily.

“Depends why you’re calling,” she retorts. Small talk will not do now.

“Right. Veronica died. Jocelyn’s mum?”

“Oh, wow,” Lil stops moving to absorb this news, and to consider the various reasons why Maggie may have called to tell her about it. So far, she’s got nothing.

“I’m sorry, Mags. I really am.” She takes a sip of water from the bottle in the holder in front of her. “I know she meant a lot to you. You alright?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie responds honestly and then, by way of an apology adds, “I’m an asshole for calling you.”

“Yeah, you are,” Lil agrees, checking the console in front of her. She’s on resistance level 4, trying to maintain a heart rate of 155, and she’ll be damned if this phone call from her ex is going to derail her efforts.

“What the hell are you _doing_?!” Maggie asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“I’m on my elliptical. What are _you_ doing?” 

Maggie exhales. “Sitting in my car. In the driveway.”

“Whose,” Lil asks cautiously. Somehow it matters. Because if Maggie is calling her from Jocelyn Knight’s driveway, she’s going to be done with this conversation _right now_.

“Mine.”

Lil processes this information carefully: Jocelyn’s mum has died, but Maggie’s not actually _with_ Jocelyn. Rather, she’s sitting in the car in her own driveway. “Okay. So…?”

“Right…” This is harder than she thought it was going to be. Ah, fuck! Maybe she should just apologize to Lil for bothering her, say “never mind,” ring off, and go about her day.

“Hello,” Lil sing songs, “Mags? You there? _You_ called _me_!” She gets back to gliding in earnest.

“Yeah...” Maggie inhales, and begins. Quickly. Efficiently. Best not beat around the bush. “I took Jocelyn to the care home yesterday to sign paperwork, finalize arrangements, and whatnot. The funeral was this morning. And then she asked me to pick up Veronica’s things, which I did. I brought the box back to the house. And we were on her balcony just now, talking. And then she said…” Maggie swallows, choking back tears. “She said her mum was all she had, and now she’s alone.”

And now Lil knows why Maggie has called her.

“Oh, for fuck’s _sake_!” Lil rolls her eyes and pokes and index finger hard at the console, turning on the little built-in fan. “Blind as a goddamned bat, isn’t she? Can’t see a flashing fucking neon sign right in front of her face!”

Lil’s use of this particular metaphor is striking, because, to Maggie’s knowledge, the only people who know about Jocelyn’s macular degeneration are she, the doctors, and Jocelyn herself. And, as of the evening before last, Ben. But that’s it. And Maggie never told Lil.

But, having interrupted herself only to gasp a much-needed breath, Lil continues, working up full head of justifiably righteous steam on Maggie’s behalf, “She’s so bloody selfish! Approaching abusive. It’s like having whiplash. I don’t know why you tolerate it.”

“Because she doesn’t mean to be.”

“Look, Mags, _I’ve_ never met her, and _you’re_ far from a fool, so I have no choice but to assume you’re right. Which begs the question: If she’s not being _intentionally_ cruel to you, then what’s she playing at? Because intent matters little to outcome. And the outcome is that you’re hurting as a consequence of her actions. _Again._ Seems like a familiar story to me.”

“I don’t know, Lil,” Maggie almost whimpers. “I followed your advice. To give her another chance. And we were getting somewhere. The last few days have been so much like they were all those years ago: easy laughter, good conversation…”

“A shit ton of sexual tension,” Lil teases.

“Yes, that, too,” Maggie begrudgingly concedes, but not without a soft smile and a delicious little tug deep in her belly.

“Crikey, Mags,” Lil laughs, “just shag each other and be done with it already!”

“No,” Maggie sobs, finally letting the tears go, “I can’t, Lil. I’m afraid. Because she shuts down, folds in on herself. I mean, she just left me there on her balcony, in the middle of our conversation. Went upstairs to change her clothes or something,” she continues with a sniffle, reaching over to the glove box for her stash of napkins. “I heard her moving around up there, I waited a few minutes. But she never came back down.

“Fuck!” Maggie cries, slamming the glove box closed, “And now I’ve given her all my goddamned tissues. ”

Lil can’t help but guffaw at that.

“Oh, shut up,” Maggie responds, wiping her cheeks dry with her fingers. And then, if only to have something to do with all her nervous frustration, the unspent excitement, the futile yearning, she begins picking little bits of dust and dirt out of the cup holders in the centre console of her dependable 2008 Astra sedan. “I think she honestly does think she’s completely alone in the world.”

“Yeah, well, she’s fucking delusional!” Lil forces the elliptical to an abrupt stop and whacks at the handlebars hard with her right hand. The workout can wait. “How many times have you dropped everything when she needed you?! She takes you too much for granted, Mags. And I said that even _before_ I knew what really went on between you. What she did to you.”

Lil’s ire is well and truly piqued now, and she can’t help the anger that only escalates as she gets going. “I also think it’s _particularly_ vile that she doesn’t seem to realize that you’re grieving, too.” She steps off the elliptical and starts pacing her basement floor. “You’ve spent more time with her mum, _caring_ for her, in the past fifteen years than she has.”

Maggie exhales in audible relief. “Thank you for saying that. For _seeing_ it.” She opens the car door for some air. And to rub the grime off her now-dirty fingers. “I’m trying to forgive her, Lil. To understand her. But she’s making it incredibly difficult.”

“Jocelyn’s an only child, yes,” Lil asks, thinking on her feet and trying to come up with some sort of explanation for Jocelyn’s behaviour. To satisfy herself as much as Maggie. Because she literally doesn’t understand how one person could treat another person with such callous disregard. Now, as well as then. How do you lead someone on like that and then drop them without so much as an apology or an explanation? Just leave, disappear. Without even saying goodbye.

“Yes.”

“So, maybe she’s used to being the centre of attention? Or maybe she was used to having to vie for it from otherwise-absorbed parents and, in the process, became accustomed to stubbornly getting by on her own? Or maybe she just has shitty self-esteem? A product of growing up closeted—even to herself? I mean, I don’t know, Mags. I’m a literature professor, for fuck’s sake, not a psychologist.”

“She did say to me once,” Maggie remembers, “a million years ago now, that day on the boat, that she’d been told she wasn’t good at caring for other people.”

“Okay!” Lil’s willing at this point to grab onto any hypothesis and run with it. She’s thinking out loud now. “Well, maybe someone said it once, and it stuck, and now it’s some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: She thinks she’s not, so she doesn’t even try? Or—and I know you won’t want to hear this, Mags—but maybe it’s actually _true_ , and she’s not worth your time. Or your energy.”

“I don’t believe that, Lil. I can’t. I fell in love with her.” Maggie’s turned her attention now to the air vents in the console and is wiping the fine dust off and out of them with the hem of her sleeve. “She was shy, it’s true. Reticent at first. But that’s just how she is. Brilliant, of course. And so funny! Her letters always made me laugh, the little anecdotes about her clients or colleagues.” Maggie smiles fondly, missing quite terribly the Jocelyn she knew then. “And she _did_ take good care of me.” She clarifies, “She took care to make me happy.”

Maggie stops for a moment, arrested without warning by the memory of that chilly, wet Saturday night in London: dinner at Jocelyn’s favourite restaurant followed by gin and cigarettes as they sat side by side, tucked away in the corner of a cozy, dimly lit bar. The hazy, heavenly ride back to the flat, arms linked, shoulders and hips pressed together in the rear of a black cab. The heat of Jocelyn’s hand resting lightly in the small of Maggie’s back as they danced slowly—and very badly—around the furniture in Jocelyn’s living room. And then the weight of Jocelyn’s lissome body on top of hers when they abandoned all hope and fell, finally, in a tangled heap onto the sofa. Maggie had never felt so well cared for, so appreciated, by a partner as she had that evening. The evening she realized she had fallen in love.

Maggie had always wondered what would’ve happened if she had kissed Jocelyn that night when she wanted to. In that split second in which Jocelyn’s nose was less than an inch above her own, her breath warm on Maggie’s neck. Would they have made love, there on the sofa? Or would Jocelyn have led her slowly, tenderly, down the darkened hallway to the bedroom? 

“That person still has to be in there somewhere, don’t you think,” Maggie asks quietly, emerging from her reverie.

Lil sighs. Maggie really has fallen down the rabbit hole of love. With an incredibly difficult person. “Alright,” Lil begins with another, related, theory, “so maybe whoever it was that told her she’s not good at caring for others slammed one more nail in a coffin that was already closing around the idea that she’s worthless?”

But that’s too far for Maggie, who shifts her phone from one ear to the other in frustration and fervent skepticism. “Oh, come on! She’s a silk, for fuck’s sake, one of the most respected criminal prosecution barristers in the country. How could she possibly think she’s worthless?”

“Look, I work with brilliant people, right? Everyday.”

“Yeah,” Maggie agrees, wondering where Lil’s going with this.

“They’re, like, researchers and scholars and people with graduate degrees out their asses. But, for chrissakes, they really are some of the most insecure people you’d ever want to meet.”

Lil pauses just a split second before continuing, “Plus, Jocelyn’s been in the closet her whole damn life. Maybe it’s internalized homophobia? Followed by shame that she’s been in hiding while others—including _you_ , my friend—have been out, fighting the good fight in her stead? Maybe mixed with regret that she wasn’t brave enough to finally come out when she fell in love with you?”

Leaning back in her seat, the fingers of her free hand drumming lightly on the steering wheel in front of her, Maggie considers this notion, Lil’s theory that, despite her extraordinary professional successes, Jocelyn Knight may not think all that highly of herself. As a barrister, yes. But as a _person_? That’s a different thing altogether.

Might it be true? Where did—does—Jocelyn’s fear come from? Why _has_ she spent her whole life in the closet? Why did she think she wasn’t good at caring for others? Where did she learn that? Does she think it still? Why was she so surprised that Maggie wanted to be her friend all those years ago? Why does she _still_ seem so surprised? Why did she run, without even saying goodbye? Why has it seemed, especially lately, that Jocelyn is ready to leap, to begin anew, only to abruptly shut down and close herself off again?

Thoroughly motionless and completely quiet for the first time since she left Jocelyn’s twenty-five minutes ago, Maggie forces herself to concentrate on inhaling the warm spring air, charged with the scent of last night’s rain shower and the promise of lilacs. She glances up and over at a squirrel nattering away in the tree in her side yard while her sharp mind quickly reassembles the puzzle that is her favourite barrister into new shapes, new patterns, to reflect a possibility that she’d never before this moment thought to consider. Might it be that Jocelyn doesn’t think she’s good enough for Maggie? Or worthy enough to matter to her?

At the start of this conversation, Maggie would have absolutely, positively rejected as ludicrous the _questions_ , let alone spend any time whatsoever in actually trying to answer them. But now…

Finally, she asks, less incredulously than she would have even five minutes ago, “Really?”

“I mean, I don’t know, Mags. I’m just _guessing_.” Lil flops down on the futon in the corner, underneath her basement window. “But I will say this: She’s definitely got some shit going on, and _you_ need to be careful. Because you deserve to be treated with respect.”

Maggie nods, watching her little squirrel friend work hard to reveal the hidden delights of an acorn. “I know. I know I do. If only she’d let me in,” Maggie laments. They’d have each other. For the rest of their lives. She’s sure of it. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Yes, you do. And you knew it before you picked up the phone: You’re going to have to talk to her. And soon. It won’t be pretty. But you’re going to have to tell her plainly that her horse shit won’t fly if she wants a relationship with you.”

“You’re right.” Because Maggie never did have the chance to respond to Jocelyn, to say her piece. Jocelyn never gave her the opportunity. Back then _or_ just now, at the house. And it’s come back to haunt them, preventing them from moving forward. Together.

Lil continues, “It’s only fair to let her know what you need as clearly as possible. She deserves that much. After that, it’s up to her.” She bends down and, with her free hand, yanks up her ankle socks and tightens the laces in her trainers, readying to get back to her workout. “If she’s convinced she has to face the world alone, she will. She’ll be alone because _she_ makes that choice. And it won’t be about you. It never was, Mags.”

Maggie exhales heavily, shaking her head. “It’s just not a good time at the moment. To have that conversation. With the trial, and now her mum dying.”

“You can’t wait for a ‘good time,’” Lil responds adamantly, “because there won’t ever be one. There’s never a ‘good time’ for unpleasant conversations. If Jocelyn loves you, if she wants a relationship with you, then _you_ have to come first. She has to make you and your feelings a priority.” She remembers to remind Maggie: “And vice versa, of course. That’s partnership. But so far it’s been all Jocelyn and no Maggie. And since she repeatedly demonstrates an appalling inability to see your love for her, and all the things you do to show it, _making_ her see it will require _forcing_ a conversation rather than waiting for the right time to have it. There won’t be an opening; you’ll have to _make_ one.”

Lil pauses, momentarily debating whether to bring this up, whether it will help or hurt. In the end, she decides, since Maggie did call her for her thoughts on the situation, to just go for it. No beating about the bush: “Plus, she’s still not out, so you’re going to have to school her on that, too.” Pondering the emotional toll sixty-ish years of hiding must’ve taken, Lil pushes air audibly through her lips. “A lifetime in the closet. Can you imagine?”

“No.” It’s a short answer, but Maggie’s heart aches with compassion for the regret and shame Jocelyn must carry with her. If only Maggie had abandoned her pride and anger. Why didn’t she confront Jocelyn on the bench in that moment fifteen years ago, when she’d had the chance? What was it that made her hold her tongue? Why didn’t she get on a train to London? Storm Jocelyn’s chambers? Wait for her outside the flat? Just to be able to force her to reckon with her lies? And if, after Maggie’d had her say, Jocelyn still didn’t want her, still thought her work more important, then at least Maggie would have known she’d done her best, tried everything she could.

“It’s a tall order, Mags. Are you up for it?”

Lowering her head into her hands, Maggie tries to massage away the tension in her forehead and temples. What the hell did she get herself into? If someone had asked her in her Greenham days what she hoped for her sixty-plus year-old self, falling in love with a scared, closeted dyke who’s built an unassailable stone fortress around her heart and soul would _not_ have been it. Just the absolute, polar opposite, in fact. As if the last year—with covering the police investigation to find Danny’s killer, all the changes made on high to operations at the _Echo_ by those corporate big shots, mentoring Olly, trying to make it work with Lil, and now Joe Miller’s trial—hadn’t been emotionally exhausting enough.

She’s finally realizing now, though, for the first time since she and Jocelyn were thrown back together again, that they won’t simply be able to pick up from where they left off fifteen years ago. To have hoped they could was too idealistic. Too much has happened. For both of them. There’s too much baggage. They just aren’t the same people anymore.

“Fuck." It's almost a moan.

Lil harrumphs in complete agreement, “Yup. I mean, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…” As she pops off the sofa, readying a return to her elliptical, she hears Maggie sniffle, clearly crying again. “Listen, Mags,” she begins emphatically, “You know who you are. You know what you want, what you need. What you _deserve_. Trust it. Be as clear as you can in communicating it. That’s all you can ask of yourself. The rest is up to her.

“Now,” she queries jovially, “can I get back to my workout?”

“Right. Yes. Of course. Sorry.” Suddenly, Maggie remembers to say: “I know I was a shit to call you, Lil.”

“Well, you were,” she agrees as she climbs back onto her contraption and resets her programming, “but I’m no worse for the wear, as it turns out.”

“Thanks for listening. I really do appreciate it.”

“I hope something I said will be helpful.”

“It will be. Hey, Lil?” Maggie asks, trying to catch her before she rings off, “I don’t take you for granted. I never did. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like it.”

“I know that, Mags. It’s all good. _We’re_ all good.” Lil smiles and entreats softly, genuinely, “Take care of yourself, yes?”

“Yeah. You, too.”

Maggie hits the red icon on her phone, leans back heavily against the headrest behind her, and looks up at the car ceiling above her. Fuck.


End file.
